Our world is a huge scientific laboratory in which strange, delightful and frightening phenomena occur every day. Some of them even manage to be captured on video. We present to you the top 10 most amazing scientific and natural phenomena captured on camera.
10. Mirages
Despite the fact that the mirage looks like something mysterious and mystical, it is nothing more than an optical effect.
It occurs when there is a significant difference between density and temperature in different layers of the air. Light is reflected between these layers, and there is a kind of play between light and air.
Objects that appear before the eyes of those who observe the mirage actually exist. But the distance between them and the mirage itself can be very large. Their projection is transmitted by multiple refraction of light rays, if favorable conditions exist for this. That is, when the temperature near the earth's surface is significantly higher than the temperature in higher atmospheric layers.
9. Batavian tears (drops of Prince Rupert)
It is recommended to watch with Russian subtitles.
These tempered glass drops have fascinated scientists for centuries. Their manufacture was kept secret, and the properties seemed inexplicable.
Hit the Batavian tears with a hammer, and they will be gone. But if you break off the tail of such a drop, the whole glass structure shatters into tiny pieces. There is a reason for scholars to be confused.
Almost 400 years have passed since Prince Rupert's drops began to attract the attention of the scientific community, and modern scientists, armed with high-speed cameras, were finally able to see these glass "tears" explode.
When a molten Batavian teardrop is dipped into water, its outer layer becomes solid, while the inside of the glass remains in a molten state. When it cools down, it contracts in volume and creates a strong structure, making the head of the drop incredibly resistant to damage. But if you break off the weak tail, the tension will disappear, which will lead to the rupture of the structure of the entire drop.
The shock wave seen in the video travels from the tail to the head of the droplet at a speed of about 1.6 kilometers per second.
8. Superfluidity
When you stir a liquid in a mug vigorously (like coffee), you can get a swirling vortex. But within a few seconds, friction between the liquid particles will stop this flow. There is no friction in a superfluid liquid. So, a superfluid substance mixed in a cup will continue to rotate forever. This is the strange world of superfluidity.
The strangest property of superfluidity? This liquid can seep out of almost any container, because the lack of viscosity allows it to pass through microscopic cracks without friction.
For those looking to play with a superfluid liquid, there is some bad news.Not all chemicals can become superfluid. In addition, this requires very low temperatures. The most famous of the substances capable of superfluidity is helium.
7. Volcanic lightning
Pliny the Younger left us the first written mention of volcanic lightning. It was associated with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
This mesmerizing natural phenomenon occurs during a volcanic eruption due to a collision between gas and ash emitted into the atmosphere. It happens much less frequently than the eruption itself, and it is a great success to catch it on camera.
6. Soaring frog
Some scientific studies make people laugh first and think later. So it happened with the experience for which its author Andrei Geim (by the way, the Nobel Prize winner in physics in 2010) received the Shnobel Prize in 2000.
This is how Game's colleague Michael Berry explained the experience. “It's amazing to see a frog floating in the air against gravity for the first time. It is held by the forces of magnetism. The power source is a powerful electromagnet. He is able to push the frog up, because the frog is also a magnet, albeit a weak one. By its nature, a frog cannot be a magnet, but it is magnetized by the field of an electromagnet - this is called "induced diamagnetism."
Theoretically, a person can also be subjected to magnetic levitation, but a sufficiently large field will be required, and so far scientists have not been able to achieve this.
5. Moving light
While light is technically the only thing we see, its movement cannot be seen with the naked eye.
However, using a camera capable of taking 1 trillion frames per second, scientists were able to create videos of light moving through everyday objects such as apples and a bottle. And with a camera capable of taking 10 trillion frames per second, they can follow the movement of a single pulse of light instead of repeating the experiment for each frame.
4. Norwegian spiral anomaly
Among the five amazing scientific phenomena captured on video is the spiral anomaly, which was seen by thousands of Norwegians on December 9, 2009.
She gave rise to a lot of speculation. People talked about the approaching Day of Judgment, the beginning of an alien invasion and black holes caused by the Hadron Collider. However, a completely "earthly" explanation for the emergence of the spiral anomaly was quickly found. It consists of a technical failure during the launch of the RSM-56 Bulava ballistic missile, produced on December 9 from the Russian submarine Dmitry Donskoy, which was in the White Sea.
The failure was reported by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, and on the basis of this coincidence, a version was put forward about the connection between the launch of the rocket and the appearance of such a fascinating and frightening phenomenon.
3. Charged particle tracker
After the discovery of radioactivity, people began to look for ways to observe the radiation in order to better understand this phenomenon. One of the earliest and still used methods for the visual study of nuclear radiation and cosmic rays is the Wilson chamber.
Its principle of operation is that supersaturated vapors of water, ether or alcohol will condense around ions. When a radioactive particle passes through the chamber, it leaves an ion trail. As the vapor condenses on them, you can directly observe the path the particle has traveled.
Today, Wilson's cameras are used to observe various types of radiation. Alpha particles leave short, thick lines, while beta particles have a longer, thinner trail.
2. Laminar flow
Can liquids placed inside each other not mix? If we are talking, for example, about pomegranate juice and water, then it is unlikely. But it's possible if you use dyed corn syrup like in the video. This is due to the special properties of the syrup as a liquid, as well as the laminar flow.
Laminar flow is a fluid flow in which layers tend to move in the same direction with each other without mixing.
The liquid used in the video is so thick and viscous that there is no particle diffusion in it. The mixture is stirred slowly so that no turbulence arises in it, which could cause color dyes to mix.
In the middle of the video, the colors appear to mix as the light travels through layers that contain individual dyes. However, slowly reversing the mixing brings the colorants back to their original position.
1. Cherenkov radiation (or the Vavilov-Cherenkov effect)
We are taught in school that nothing moves faster than the speed of light. Indeed, the speed of light appears to be the fastest Flash in this universe. With only one caveat: while we are talking about the speed of light in a vacuum.
When light enters any transparent medium, it slows down. This is due to the electronic component of electromagnetic waves of light interacting with the wave properties of electrons in the medium.
It turns out that many objects can move faster than this new, slower speed of light. If a charged particle enters water at 99 percent of the speed of light in a vacuum, then it can overtake light that moves in water at only 75 percent of its speed in a vacuum.
The Vavilov-Cherenkov effect is caused by the radiation of a particle moving in its medium faster than the speed of light. And we can actually see how this happens.